Political 'fits' overshadow PM Modi's fitness challenge to Karnataka CM HDK

BENGALURU: What was started as a fitness challenge to motivate India and its leaders from across the spectrum of politics, tinsel towns and sports disciplines, appears to have now catapulted into a political “fit”, with a tinch of friendly banter.
On Wednesday, under the social media hashtag of of “HumFitThoIndiaFit”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted a video of his supposed daily fitness regime.

No sooner did he post his regime, to inspire his 43 million Twitter followers, Modi followed it up with another tweet asking Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy to accept his challenge and post a video of him “sweating it out” to take the challenge forward.



While PM Modi also challenged the entire fraternity of Indian Police Service (IPS) officer above 40 years and 2018 Common Wealth Games (CWG) gold medalist and table tennis player Manik Batra, it came as a surprise decision to challenge Kumaraswamy.

Furthermore, PM Modi also did not use the opportunity to challenge his predecessor and Kumaraswamy’s father H D Deve Gowda for the challenge, as the 85 year old continues to practice yoga regularly.

Speculations are now rife over whether the PM wanted to taunt Kumaraswamy or urge him to be more fit, considering he has already been operated twice for a heart valve replacement and is not known for his “fitness”.

Within the hour of the challenge, Kumaraswamy tweeted back to PM Modi thanking him for the concern the latter had for his health.



While Kumaraswamy did not assure of posting a video of his fitness regime, he spelt out that yoga and treadmill was part of his daily workout.

However, Kumaraswamy took a step further and added: “Yet, I am more concerned about development fitness of my state&seek ur support for it.”

The fitness challenge was first started by union sports minister Rajyavardhan Rathore earlier this year, who built upon the unique concept to encourage more citizens to concentrate on their fitness.